While air strikes continue to hit the Islamist stronghold of Fallujah, the pressure is mounting on both the Islamists in the city and the Iraqi and American forces readying for assault.
U.S. warplanes attacked targets in and around the insurgent-held city of Falluja early Saturday, while sporadic gunfire and artillery echoed through the night.
U.S. and Iraqi forces are gearing up for a major offensive in the western city and interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Friday the “window is closing” for a peaceful settlement there.
“We intend to liberate the people and bring the rule of law,” Allawi said in Brussels, Belgium, where he was visiting the European Union and NATO to discuss aid for his fledgling government.
Allawi will make the decision whether to begin the assault. Iraqi authorities have asked Falluja city leaders to hand over the insurgents.
That the terrorists are on the clock is obvious. The battle that is brewing is one they cannot win. Unless they avoid the assault, the terrorists can only hope for another act of restraint by Allawi, whether driven by high losses or another gambit of mercy.
That the clock is a danger to the coalition is more subtle but two-fold.
First, I wrote less than two weeks ago about the British agreement to move troops of the Black Watch Regiment to Baghdad to free up American forces for the anticipated Fallujah action. Well, as somehow seems wont to occur to troops in a war zone, the Black Watch has suffered casualties and the anti-war Brit press is melodramatically playing it for all it’s politically worth.
British newspapers are keeping Prime Minister Tony Blair in the hot seat by playing up the nation’s grief and anger over the deaths of three soldiers redeployed to a US-run sector of Iraq.
For the second day in a row, the national dailies ran front-page stories about the deaths of three soldiers in a suicide attack after their Black Watch regiment redeployed in the last week to an insurgent-hit area near Baghdad.
The Daily Express, a mass circulation tabloid, ran a 12-year-old girl’s poignant farewell note to her father who was killed in the bombing under the headline: “So Is It Really Worth It Mr. Blair?”
“To Dad, Love you and miss you, Love Kirstin,” read the note to Sergeant Stuart Gray from his daughter Kirstin Gray.
The Express and other newspapers also ran a searing condemnation from Private Craig Lowe, a serving soldier whose brother Paul was one of the three killed.
He said his 19-year-old-brother had been deeply opposed to a conflict fought over “money and oil”.
“He (Paul) thought they shouldn’t be there, they should all just be back here because it’s a war which nobody knows why it was started or what it was done for,” said Lowe, who himself returned from Iraq last month.
The Independent newspaper ran a front-page photograph of Paul Lowe wearing his ceremonial military kilt against a backdrop of the number 19, his age. The headline read: “A boy who just wanted to come home.”
The Ministry of Defense in London on Friday named Private Paul Lowe, along with Sergeant Stuart Gray, 31, and 22-year-old Private Scott McArdle as the soldiers killed along with an Iraqi civilian translator.
The trio, all from the Scottish-based Black Watch regiment, died on Thursday afternoon when a vehicle-borne suicide bomb exploded at a checkpoint they were manning by the Euphrates River.
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The incident happened just two days after the 850-strong Black Watch battle group started full operations at Camp Dogwood, a bleak outpost to the west of the insurgent-hit town of Mahmudiyah, southwest of Baghdad.
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The redeployment has been hugely controversial in Britain, with Blair’s critics accusing him of sending troops into harm’s way largely as a symbolic gesture to show that the United States is not fighting alone in Iraq.
Blair has insisted the decision was military, not political.
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However the deaths, so soon after the redeployment, were bleak political news for a prime minister who has seen his opinion poll ratings tumble since he opted to back the invasion of Iraq.
Blair came under swift condemnation, with Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, bitterly contrasting “the bravery of our soldiers with the duplicity of the politicians who sent them there”.
Blair, however sturdy in his resolve and right in his cause, cannot for long be asked to pay a political price for Fallujah.
Secondly, the planned election calendar adds to the pressure and, as is the norm, Kofi Annan and the dysfunctional United Nations ain’t helping.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned the United States, Britain and Iraq that an assault on Falluja risked further dividing the Iraqi people and undermining planned January elections.
…. U.N. officials made no secret of their fear that a large-scale attack on Falluja could provoke an election boycott by Sunni Muslims [previously discussed here] and undermine efforts to promote stability.
Okay, granted a beatdown of the terrorists may spur a Sunni boycott, but a prolonged standoff will most assuredly affect the election. Possibly damned if you do, certainly damned if you don’t. No matter the UN’s eventual level of love for the election, Iraq is better off with a pacified Fallujah. Let’s roll.